A Tour Of Hotpot, Google's New Restaurant Site

Google just released a new product for finding restaurants called "Hotpot." Hotpot is both local and social, two hot areas Google is not leading.

We took a quick run through Hotpot. It seems useful and well designed. We already prefer it to Yelp, but generally we're not big fans of Yelp. (Something about it feels not right to us.)

If you like Yelp, then we don't see any reason to switch to Hotpot. Hotpot probably won't develop into a rollicking place for a big community.

The problem with Hotpot -- which is the problem with all things social for Google -- is that for it to really work well, we'll need our friends to start using it. We just don't see that happening. For whatever reason, our friends just aren't interested in setting up Google profiles.

But! Even without those losers, Hotpot can still be a nice utility. As we review more restaurants, it will learn our tastes and recommend places to eat. It also aggregates reviews and information on each restaurant, making it super useful.

Hotspot will be added to Android, but no word on if it becomes an iPhone app.